Wangaratta Jazz Festival chief meets arts minister George Brandis about funding concerns

Festival chairman Paul Squires travelled to Canberra last week to meet with Mr Brandis after being concerned about the impact of revised funding guidelines on the jazz festival and other smaller community events and festivals.

Mr Squires was informed the draft guidelines were being refined to ensure regional events were not disadvantaged in comparison to metropolitan counterparts.

“This has created great concern across the industry and resulted in uncertainty relating to future funding options and in the case of our own festival, concern regarding our future planning as Australia Council funding comes to an end this year,” Mr Squires said.

“Our main concern has been that the guidelines make it difficult not only of our own festival but the many small to medium organisations across rural and regional Australia to qualify for funding and that the draft guidelines were biased towards larger metropolitan based organisations.

"We were also informed of proposals to double the funding available within the budget pool to festivals."

Mr Brandis has been invited to this year's festival in November.

Mr Squires confirmed Liberal candidate for Indi Sophie Mirabella arranged the meeting with Mr Brandis.

"I would like to thank Sophie for taking this initiative,” Mr Squires said after his visit to Canberra.

The festival board is preparing funding applications for two separate programs.

Mrs Mirabella said the assurances from Mr Brandis were welcomed.

“The minister assured us that the draft guidelines are being refined to ensure equity of access and specifically greater emphasis on regional funding within the criteria,” she said.

“The minister also indicated that funding had been quarantined within the criteria for rural and regional areas and additional funding for festivals had been doubled to $1.5 million.”